Below are summaries of the projects for which I’m currently looking for beta readers. All this info can also be found on the beta readers tab up there at the top of the page.

NOVELS:AriahAriah has never quite known who he is. He is an elvish man at the mercy of his magical talents: a mimic and a shaper. He is a man who speaks in others’ voices, who feels others’ emotions as keenly as his own. For Ariah, the line where he ends and others begin has always been murky.

When his teacher, Dirva, receives an unexpected visitor, Ariah’s magical training comes to a screeching halt. Ariah follows Dirva across borders to a city where there is no one to help him marshal his gifts. Ariah meets Dirva’s brother, Sorcha, a man who will change Ariah’s life forever. The thread of Ariah’s life weaves high and low: he meets queens, works in factories, is nearly killed by bandits in a desert, and sails the southern seas with pirates. Ariah finds love, loses it, and finds it again. Along the way Ariah gains mastery of his magic. He discovers what kind of man he wants to be, and what kind of man he is.

Set in the unique and finely realized fantasy universe of Aerdh, ARIAH is a completed fantasy novel 128,000 words in length. Ariah’s is a story of a young man’s journey to reconcile his heart, his talents, and his beliefs with a world that is sometimes hostile. Ariah’s story is about the ways we surrender and the ways we fight to survive. It is a tale of love found in unexpected places and in unexpected ways.

Mage-Born
No one ever told Shilla about the drive, or about pregnancy, or about the Magi birthright. No one ever told Shilla much about anything. But the drive comes anyway, and Shilla finds herself pregnant with no idea what to expect or how to handle it. Her ignorance is damning and terrifying. All she knows is that the child must be born, and that she must travel far north into the Magi homeland to bring it into the world.

Circumstances force her to travel with the child’s father, a mage burdened by secrets he refuses to share with her. As the child grows within her, Shilla’s magic becomes weaker and weaker, but she pushes on, and drags the baby’s father with her. As the months slink by, Shilla finds herself compelled to keep going, determined to get to the homeland, and burning with resentment that she’s in the situation to begin with. Her body becomes increasingly foreign to her, she finds herself in stranger and stranger lands, and Shilla must look inward for the strength to make it through the pregnancy alive and sane.

Set in the world of Aerdh, a universe of wily and wary magic, MAGE-BORN is a completed fantasy novel 77,000 words in length. MAGE-BORN explores the isolating intimacy and terrible strangeness of pregnancy, the way it pushes you apart from the world and bonds you to people you’d never expect.

Arisyabet and Gahvrielo built knives. They live in the cloister and serve the satyr villages of the high mountain peaks as assassins, and they know that in order to keep living they must follow through on the death edicts the village elders hand down. The assassins themselves will be killed if they are no longer useful. For Arisyabet, the lines of her life are startlingly clear: do as asked and keep living. Protect the cloister to protect herself. But her best friend and lover, Gahvrielo, cannot bring himself to accept who and what he is.

An assassin’s life is not easy. Danger lurks around every corner, as much from within as from without. Arisyabet and Gahvrielo cling together, but their attempts to make sense of their lives drive them in opposite directions. Their story starts with an act of anguished brutality and unfolds layer by layer to explain how and why two people so devoted to one another wind up like they do.

ASSASSINS is a completed fantasy novella 27,000 words in length set in the richly imagined fantasy universe of Aerdh. ASSASSINS explores the idea of free will, of choice, and the moralities of what we do to survive.

Arisyabet and Gahvrielo built knives. They live in the cloister and serve the satyr villages of the high mountain peaks as assassins, and they know that in order to keep living they must follow through on the death edicts the village elders hand down. The assassins themselves will be killed if they are no longer useful. For Arisyabet, the lines of her life are startlingly clear: do as asked and keep living. Protect the cloister to protect herself. But her best friend and lover, Gahvrielo, cannot bring himself to accept who and what he is.

An assassin’s life is not easy. Danger lurks around every corner, as much from within as from without. Arisyabet and Gahvrielo cling together, but their attempts to make sense of their lives drive them in opposite directions. Their story starts with an act of anguished brutality and unfolds layer by layer to explain how and why two people so devoted to one another wind up like they do.

ASSASSINS is a completed fantasy novella 27,000 words in length set in the richly imagined fantasy universe of Aerdh. ASSASSINS explore the idea of free will, of choice, and the moralities of what we do to survive.

I just finished a novella about satyrs assassins (the first chapter is up here)! It clocks in at 27,000 words and explores themes of essentialism and free will with a heavy dose of queerness in there because that just seems to happen in my writing. Looking for first readers, so let me know if you’re interested!

Below is the first chapter of a new piece i’m working on. It’s coming along quite quickly, pulling together quite well. I’m excited about this project, and I thought I’d share this with all of you! A note for clarity: the characters are satyrs whose language is musical. Dialogue in italics denotes that they are using this sung language; dialogue in quotes means they are speaking a spoken language. I hope you enjoy it! Any and all feedback is welcome!

Gahvi and I tracked the mad bastard to this ramshackle house on the Lothic coast. It slants towards the sea, the slats and boards cured a gray-brown by the salt winds. All the windows have been boarded up. There is a paltry garden along the side of the house, a well behind it, and a grave marker beside the well. Nothing else. There is no one around for miles; this house sits far too close to the Pokelocken for anyone’s comfort. The air tastes of magic even to my mundane tongue. He’s in there.

A frown twitches across Gahvi’s face. He takes a silent step back and to the left, hidden suddenly in shadows. But I feel him. I feel his hesitance, his distaste. He’s always been more idealist than me. It balances my pragmatism. I reach over to take his hand, but his fingers dance from mine. He sighs.

Gahvi, he’s a renegade.

How are we not renegades, Bet?

We’re not villagers. He is.

What if he’s not mad?

Now it’s my turn to sigh. Gahvi.

There’s madness, he sings, and there are broken rules. They’re not always the same.

Name one.

One what? he asks.

One we’ve killed who wasn’t mad.

He retreats into silence. He darts off towards the house without waiting for me, and I can’t help but revel in the fact that I am right. He swings back behind the house. He stops and peers at the marker, and I watch him try to read it. When he shakes his head and moves on I move on myself. I slink along the front of the house, low and silent. It faces a craggy inlet of the sea and overlooks the gnarled trees of the Pokelocken. Something on the wind disturbs me. Large gray birds fly too low, cawing and staring. A clutch of them alight on the crumbling remnants of the house’s chimney.

I spot the glare of dull sunlight reflecting off an attic window. As far as I can tell, this clouded pane of glass is the only remaining one. A shadow passes by, darkening the window. Of me and Gahvrielo, I have always been the better climber. There is no good way to climb when you’re a satyr — we can get very close to silence, but not when our hooves are knocking against the sides of buildings — but sometimes you have to risk noise to make it clean. I climb the front of the house board by board. One comes loose and I nearly fall, but I make it. I crouch beneath the window, trying to make out the lay of the room, trying to see if anyone is in it, but the glass is too cloudy to see much of anything. I listen instead, my ear pressed to the pane. I hear nothing but the drip of a leaking roof. I slip one of my throwing knives out of the bandoleer and shatter the pane. One shard scrapes my ribs as it falls to the overgrown grass below; another lodges in my forearm when I climb through. There are time I wish we assassins wore clothes.

The room is empty. I wait for a handful of seconds, but no one heard me break the glass. I suck in a breath and pull the glass out of my arm. A thread of Song comes to me — something built of anger and challenge. These fucking mad renegades. It’s been getting worse lately. We hardly even had a chance to catch our breath from the last hunt before Maro sent us out on this one, and now I’m standing here bleeding already. Fucking renegades.

Footsteps in the hall. A door creaks open. The throwing knife rights itself in my hand, my fingers on its tip. It is alive and vibrating with anticipation. The ones nestled in my bandoleer hope and are vaguely bitter. I stand tall. There is a dignity in the confrontation. I am not Dahv; I might kill from a distance, but mine always turn to face what they’ve done before justice falls. I open the door and step out into the hall.

I see him through an open door. He stands in a shaft of diluted light. Something about the light this close to the Pokelocken bothers me. It’s too insubstantial, like a reflected reflection of real light. The light seems to drain him of color: he stands tall and still, black-haired and white-skinned. And he is hideous. He is drowning in a sea of madness.

The renegade stands staring down at his hands, the look on his face lost and confused. His hair is longer than mine. It falls down past his elbows. It is a sheet of black, a hard and cold black like the feathers of a raven. He wears a linen shirt cut loose, the collar turned up. And he wears pants. Sackcloth pants, what would be knee-length is he was human or elvish. His Sindhelli legs jut out from the hems, and they are unsightly. Naked. The fur shaved. The skin a translucent white.

The renegade stands in profile. He was handsome once, even I can see that. A strong jaw, an imperious nose. Thick, dark eyebrows and thick, dark eyelashes. But now his face is angular and gaunt, his eyes sunken. He’s disfigured himself: his horns are gone. On his forehead, near his hairline, a lump of bone juts out. The edge is rounded and smooth, filed down. The pain when he broke his horns must have been excruciating. And now I know why Maro sent us. I am one with a deep capacity for pity. I cannot stand here and see what this man has done to himself and hate him. My heart breaks for him. He is a renegade, and renegades are arrogant. He has tried to change his path, change himself, and it was always doomed to failure. You can’t change anything in this world. There is and there isn’t; it is that simple. The tormented ones who try to bend the world to their will, they wreak havoc and they cause destruction, but they are deserving of pity. Maro sends Gahvi and I to the ones who need a clean death, a merciful death. The mad ones who are given one last chance at sanity before their crimes claim them.

It is my lot, but it is never easy. I am at peace with it, but it always sits heavy. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t have been sent. I sing to the renegade. I treat him like he is sane and Sindhelli one last time before I bring down justice. Tell me your name.

He looks over and sees me for the first time. And as far gone as he is, he knows. His eyes widen. His shaved legs stumble and sway. He holds on to the door frame and shakes his head. “No. No! I have a son!”

We know. Tell me your name.

“His name is Kellibin! Just let us be. Please. Please, I just…I —”

I take a step forward. The knife heats in my hand; the edges sharpen themselves. Tell me your name, I sing again, willing him into the custom. Take it, renegade. Take a Sindhelli death.

He stumbles back. A metal plate clatters on the floor. “No!”

I take another step towards him. Your death has come, and your child’s, too. I will make it swift. I offer you Sindhelli death. Tell me you name, and I will see your instrument back to the mountains.

Something hardens in the renegade. He laughs. “I don’t have anything for you to take back. I burned it.”

He…he burned it? He burned his own instrument?

He stands taller, harder, and advances towards me. “I burned that fucking violin when she died. It brought me nothing but trouble. Take your Sindhelli death and fuck yourself with it, assassin. I am many things, but I am not Sindhelli.”

Shockingly fast, the renegade picks up a hammer. He lunges at me. There is nothing in him but brute force. No artistry, only fury. Madness and fury. The emptiness in his eyes is terrible. But, I am trained, and this is my kind of music, and I dodge him easily.

They don’t usually fight back. Mine don’t, anyway. Dahv gets sent for those. My heart races, and my blood sings. The spectacle of violence stokes me higher and higher. I play with him. Taunting and teasing, letting him close, and letting him fail. His frustration sets me grinning. I smell his sweat, listen to the percussive staccato of his breath, and I being to sing. I sing him the Song of Death, Maro’Shalivni. I skirt away from him as I sing. The distance between us widens. As the Song crests, the knives fly from my fingertips. They sail in languid, unhurried arcs through the air and lodge into his tortured body, thunk thunk thunk. One in his heart, one in his throat, one through the lung. The blood pours out of him, his breath stops, and he is dead in less than a minute. I drink in his death, drink in the peculiar stillness which lingers in the air after death. I drink in this feeling that the world is set again to rights. I drink it all in, and drunk on it, dizzy and grinning, I drag his body down the stairs to the main floor of the house.

The renegade’s body is heavy, but I am high on his death and it feels light to me. I hum under my breath as his body thuds rhythmically down the stairs. Such madness in this one. One for the stories. I’ll sing of him to the rest and he’ll have a ghost’s life as a cloister song.

Bet.

I look over my shoulder. Gahvi stands in the front doorway, all shadow. Come look at his corpse, Gahvi. He was so far gone.

Gahvi doesn’t move. I wipe the blood from my hands on the renegade’s shirt and stand up. A second shadow appears in the doorway. A child’s shadow. And I know. Kill him, Gahvi.

No.

Gahvi and I are bound together, but there is nothing in me but the cloister. It is not even a thought. A knife flies from my fingers.

My aim is perfect. I have perfect aim the way the villagers have perfect pitch. But Gahvi’s aim is perfect, too, and he drops down, blocking the knife’s path with his own body. The knife sinks into his arm, and I swear I feel it. My second knife drops from my hand, and I run towards him. Gahvi!

He holds out his other arm. Back, Bet.

Gahvi, the child —

He wrenches my knife out of his arm and holds it at the ready. He leans into the house, his eyes cold and wild. I know that look, that look he gets when his mind is frantic, burning with questions. That look he gets when he loses himself with Dahv in a cold and furious bout of sex that is more battle than anything else. This is the look of his will: a will as unbending and sharp as his push knives. Bet, I love you, he sings.

I love you, too.

I am going renegade.

My mind empties out. We can’t go renegade. We’re assassins.

I think we can, he sings. I’m not killing this kid, Bet.

We have to, Gahvi.

No.

Gahvrielo, he’s an abomination.

Turn renegade with me.

He’s an abomination!

He lurches into the room. His arm bleeds a river. The blood pools around his hooves, slipping between the cracks in the floorboards. I know his body as well as I know my own. His body is mine, an extension of mine. My knife nicked an artery. He will lose consciousness in about three minutes if he keeps bleeding out. I plot ways to keep him talking for those three minutes, and then the child slips behind him. I let another knife fly and he catches it, this time with his leg. He sucks in a breath. His face, finally, slips out of the shadows. The look he gives me is the look I gave the renegade: pity. Bet. I love you so much.

Why are you doing this? I ask, but I know why. All those nights, and all those questions.

He holds onto the door frame. He takes in a lungful of air, and then he sings me a Song of Love. I didn’t even know he had one. All these years together, and I…I didn’t know he had one to give. And I don’t even have one to give him back. Tears spill down my cheeks.

When the world goes so starkly black and white, there are only two things I know for certain. There is no me without him, and what there is of me belongs to the cloister. I am his, and I serve the villages. His Song fills me up. I feel everything all over again, every touch, every laugh. I am across the room before I even realize I’ve moved. I wrap my hands around his arm, trying desperately to staunch the blood flow. His Song falters. He drops his face to my shoulder, and his tears wet my hair. Turn with me, Arisyabet. Please turn with me.

My hands drop from his arm. I feel a coldness brewing in the pit of my stomach.

He takes a ragged breath. Arisyabet, I love you as none could have loved another. I will love you even when we are both ghosts.

Gahvi —

His push knife rakes across my throat. The cold steel slices me open, and my voice, my Songs, my life spills to the floor in a sea of blood. He catches me with his unwounded arm. He weeps into my hair as I die. Arisyabet, he sings, I love you, and I am sorry.

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Pronouns: they/them/their. B R Sanders is a white, genderqueer writer who lives and works in Denver, CO, with their family and two cats. B writes about queer elves, mostly, as featured in their two novels, the award-winning ARIAH and their debut novel RESISTANCE, both of which are set in the same universe. They love drinking coffee and sleeping, but alas, drinking coffee makes it hard to sleep. Stay in touch with B on twitter (@B_R_Sanders) or with their newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bgYFjf